This has been a busy month for me. I adjusted to the kids all being gone 7hrs a day rather quickly. I have to keep up the productivity today, as they'll be home until Tuesday (husband works Monday), so the amount of quilting will be minimal after noon tomorrow. Despite all the time I apparently have, it always seems to go fast, making me wonder how and when I will ever complete all that I have to do.
I have a good amount of client work right now. Mind you, I seem to backlog only what can be done in a few weeks. I will never be the type of quilter that will continue to take client quilts when I know it will be 6 months until I actually get to them. I know how to put my own quilting on hold to keep the client work up to date. This week I have been working on some rather mundane and very large quilts. I don't mean that the quilt itself is boring, but quilting an E2E on a 110" quilt (or two of them) does get mind-numbing after a while. To keep me interested, I have been running 2 passes of the pattern, then taking a break to do 30 minutes of piecing on this solids quilt. I have 2 more corners to piece and then I will probably show something. After doing that, I decided I would sit down and sketch on the quilting plan for this quilt with Photoshop. I'm getting psyched to quilt it -- nothing like diving into a nice small 40" custom to get a quilter excited! In the evenings this month, I am focused on only one of my applique projects. That way, maybe I will actually make enough progress to start putting the sections together on this quilt. Gosh, I can't believe it was mid-summer when I worked on this last...talk about scatterminded. And lastly, I have had the Giant green Dresden out, with the seam picker, removing the errors. The silk thread is a bitch to remove, especially if it is tensioned well (which most of it is, sigh!). Once I have client work caught up, I will put this on the frame for a week of finishing. Hopefully that will be before Thanksgiving.
In the meantime, here is the 3rd custom quilt I did last week, and appropriate for the season. I did one of these 2 years ago, so I had some of the same ideas, and cardstock templates still.
I added some fun things (hope the owner finds them fun...) in the Jackolanterns...the cat gathered some fishies, while googly-eyes below him just got candy.
The next guy has lots of bubbles, but the owl has some fun feathers. I think they are playful, and hope she does as well.
And in each corner of the quilt is a spider web, with a very prominent green spider. ONLY for Halloween will I allow spiders, anywhere!
what a fun quilt to quilt! Love the fish~ oh do i know about busy also! Both my sons are living on their own now 6 hours away....i miss having them around terribly but thank goodness for my work and play. :) karen
ReplyDeleteMargaret, your quilting never ceases to amaze me. Even though, I rarely comment, I check your blog often. Take care, former HQ roomie. :)
ReplyDeleteWhat a fun job you did with the Halloween quilt! She's sure to love the extras you put in with the baskets. I would!
ReplyDelete